Audit Committees in Germany – Theoretical Reasoning and Empirical Evidence

Annette G. Köhler

Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr), 2005, vol. 57, issue 3, 229–252

Abstract: This paper shows that due to legal restrictions, audit committee formation in Germany is not only a matter of enhancing monitoring effectiveness, but also a means of increasing Supervi-sory Board efficiency. This result is linked to some empirical findings derived from a ques-tionnaire developed especially for the survey and sent out to 100 German Supervisory Board/audit committee chairpersons in April 2004. The questionnaire covered the motivation, composition, qualification, organisation, and responsibilities of current German audit commit-tees. The results show that free float, perceived independence of members, and the size of audit committees significantly influence audit committee composition, and that tasks that are mainly auditor-related are treated as supplementary.

Keywords: Audit Committee; Auditor; Corporate Governance; Monitoring. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M42 M49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.vhb.de/sbr/pdfarchive.html (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sbr:abstra:v:57:y:2005:i:3:p:229-252

Access Statistics for this article

Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr) is currently edited by Wolfgang Ballwieser

More articles in Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr) from LMU Munich School of Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by sbr ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).